Biochar Pizza Oven

Date Saturday 17th May ’25
Time 12.00 – 4.00pm Designing and prototyping Biochar burn from 4.00pm
Location Meadow Orchard Project

Last year we built a couple of Top Lit Up Draft TLUD biochar retorts, combing a small oven and a hot plate for cooking on. The next step we are looking at how to utilise the heat from the stove to heat a pizza oven.

We’ll be joined by Rakesh Rootsman Rak and volunteers from Loughborough Farm who are designing a Biochar – Clay / Cob Oven and looking for an opportunity at see our ovens and Biochar burners with the aim of helping them to help refine their own design.

A Biochar oven utilising the efficient burn process of the TLUD to swiftly heat up the oven. This in turn uses less fuel than a conventional cob oven, emits way less smoke and produces a useful volume of biochar too (as well as tasty pizza, bread and hot food as it warms up).

This activity primarily a design and prototyping exercise, exploring the potential of a biochar retort for cooking on. Using some of the materials on site and looking at possible construction methods utilising sustainable materials such as clay, sand, straw, willow and upcycled materials.

Our Example Stoves and Biochar Retorts

As well as our Hookway Retort and Two Drum retort we now have a couple of Top-lit updraught cook stoves. A Top-lit updraught (TLUD) is a small retort for producing charcoal. In a TLUD the biomass is loaded into a drum (a 60l or 25l oil drum) and a small fire lit on top. Primary air is drawn in from small holes below the biomass, the limited supply of air or oxygen creates dense smoke, this is then mixed with secondary air pulled in from holes near the top of the vessel. The draft of secondary air ensures the complete combustion of the wood gases, creating a very efficient stove.

The benefits of a Biochar Stove

A biochar retort effectively cooks the biomass, driving out volatile organic compounds in the wood smoke, this prevents these potentially damaging greenhouse gasses from being released into the atmosphere. As well as providing a valuable soil amendment a biochar stove also provides an efficient hotplate to cook on, a small oven for baking, consuming the fraction of the wood than cooking on an open fire.